Saturday, December 31, 2011

Yes you herd it right! Now you can make your Ambiance & Radiance desktop theme any dang color you want! Isn't that Cool?

We took on this task of creating this theme sometime in early November. Because once againwe saw a few Ambiance & Radiance themes out there but usually in only one color and in only in one of the Ambiance & Radiance versions! And sometimes we felt the colors where off or it wasn't done the way we would have liked.

And since we are so picky we decided to roll are own! We couldn't find an all inclusive package of 8 Different colored Ambiance & Radiance Themes. And So with that great open source mentality in mind we decided to make one!

We worked extremely hard on getting beautiful calm and crisp colors. Spending quite a deal of time selecting each color. We made an inherent design decision to make all the colors less "bright" and saturated as the original Ambiance & Radiance. We felt it was a little too bright.After selecting these colors we hoped they would be soft one ones eyes and calming.

Also we made a few changes to the underlying theme but nothing huge as this is still suppose to be Ambiance & Radiance.

We changed the terminal colors across all the versions from eggplant purple to a dark grayish black background with Grayish/White text. It's very elegant looking and easy on your eyes. We got inspired from FreeBSD's & PCBSD (TM) terminal colors.

we removed "colorizing" of the active or selected button.Leaving only the border outlined instead. We did this partly because we think it looks nice and becuase using darker colors in the theme really made the colorized button unreadable.We could have lighted the saturation level however in doing so you inherit the nightmare of matching every single color's "prelight" color to one another. additionally you have to correctly match the colors using different syntax and brightness levels between GTK2 and 3. We attempted this but always felt the end result would look better not colorized thus we only outline the border of active or selected buttons. Perhaps next time perhaps not

Anywhooo... After 3 months of development. Heavy testing and tweaking Here it is:

(!) Updated 11.10.1 Version (Jan 30) , Full Gnome Shell support, New Improved Design,(As well as classic) Fixes and more.

Now Available in a Official PPA or Ubuntu, Mint or Debian Packages! See bellow! Thanks go to Dr.Amr

The Ambiance & Radiance themes, Are now in all the colors of the rainbow and then some! Now you can have any color Ambiance or Radiance theme you want! Now in the highly popular Ambiance and Radiance improved design! As well as Classic Ambiance and Radiance colors

Now in 2 Versions! Now in the highly popular Ambiance and Radiance improved design by:"simplygreat". And in the "Classic" Ambiance and Radiance design used in Ubuntu by default. Yes thats right every color comes in both ambiance and radiance AS WELL is in Classic or Improved ambiance and radiance.

Now with Full Gnome-Shell Support! (See bellow on how to install/activate it...)

Includes both: Ambiance & Radiance GTK2&3 Widget and Window border themes.* Build to work with GTK3! themes that don't support GTK3 yet look like Win95(TM) when running gtk3 apps! This theme won't do that!* Installs as separate themes from the main Ambiance/Radiance.

NOW INCLUDED IN ALL VERSIONS:Your choice between:

(1) Ambiance and Radiance Improved (DEFAULT) -The ambiance and radiance themes in 8 different colors with major design revisions includingunified tool-bar and window-bar. Dark and Light Nautilus sidebars. Simplified Window Buttons (Color droplets with no symbols on them) and more!

(2) Classic Ambiance and Radiance (CLASSIC) - The ambiance and radiance themes in 8 different colors (Original) with minimal changes from stock ambiance and radiance (Latest Versions of each)

(!) Both of these versions will be selectable when you install any version of the theme.

NOTE: The original Ambiance/Radiance Themes are Designed and created By: Kenneth Wimer, James Schriver, Andrea Cimitan (C) 2010-2011 GPL Canonicol LTD.This is a "port" simply with different colors and a little different design.(!) This is not a fork! we will be fallowing updates to Ambiance/Radiance as close as we can. THIS IS NOT by the Originol Ambiance/Radiance Authors

Brought to you by(Based on):

RAVEfinity (C) 2011+ RAVEfinty, (Jared Sot.) (www.ravefinity.blogspot.com)RAVEfinity designed and created the Ambiance & Radiance Colors theme "port" with carefully selected colors. Bringing loads of new colors to Ambiance & Radiance! We also made a few design changes. And Creator of Ambiance&Radiance-XFCE&LXDE (Port) used to provide Xfce and LXDE support.

(Based on stock Ambiance/Radiance, We modify as little as possible to make it work on XFCE/LXDE & Openbox.)Ambiance/Radiance Themes Designed and created By: Kenneth Wimer, James Schriver, Andrea Cimitan (C) 2010-2011 GPL Canonicol LTD.

(Original Openbox Border Based On (Note: we now develop and maintain this as separate updated "fork" that your using.)Ambiance Openbox (Window Borders) By: David Barr (C) 2010 GPL. (http://david.chalkskeletons.com/)*We use the original and,then ported Radiance based on this.

(Original XFCE Border Based On (Note: we now develop and maintain this as separate updated "fork" that your using.)Ambiance for XFCE(Window Borders) By: p0ng (C) 2010 GPL (http://www.p0ng.com.br)*We have applied fixes and ported Radiance based on this.

2.)Simply Paste this into the terminal:

(You may need to copy and paste 1 line after another. this is a Que of commands not 1 single command)

(!) You will now be prompted for your user password... type this in the terminal when asked(This gives your system permission to install the software source. your password is not shared with anyone and only your computer verifies and keeps it.)

3.) Now Press Enter to confirm adding of the software.

4.) Type "Y" when asked to confirm if you wish to install the software.

*If you want the themes that support XFCE,LXDE and openbox paste this*sudo apt-get install ambiance-colors-xfcelxde radiance-colors-xfcelxde

(NOTE) A PPA means you will receive updates through the update manager and never have to think about updating or manually installing the theme!

If you would just like to download the Ubuntu (.Deb) packages manually then just see bellow.

To install The Theme for *your user account only*, Fallow these steps, They should work on any GTK2&3 *nix desktop.

1.) Click to Open Up the package file you just downloaded... "Ambiance&Radiance-Colors-11-10.tar.gz"2.) Once Open, Click the "Extract" Button... Then Browse to: /Home/YourUserName/.Themes(!)To see the folder (it's a hidden one!) press ctrl+h in this file browser window to view hidden folders. the folder we want to install it in is ".themes" in your home directory.3.) Extract the complete package "Ambiance&Radiance-Colors-11-10.tar.gz" file (Folders and all)to the ".themes" folder in your home directory.4.) Select it VIA your Theme Manager! see bellow.(!) This will install the theme for the current user only , Every user will have to do this on there own!, Thats why we recommend the system wide method (See README packed in download)

Install The Ambiance & Radiance-Xfce/LXDE Theme SYSTEM Wide:

1.) Open a terminal and type: sudo file-roller (Then type your password when asked)-Fedora/Redhat Users Without sudo, type: "su -c file-roller" (Then type the root password)2.) Now You will see the File Roller Archiver application...Click "File -> Open" Then Browse for the package you just downloaded: "Ambiance&Radiance-Colors-11-10.tar.gz". Then click open.3.) Once You've opened the "Ambiance&Radiance-Colors-11-10.tar.gz" package,Select "Extract". Then Browse to the fallowing folder:"/usr/share/themes/" Then click ok!3.)The Ambiance&Radiance-Colors Theme Should now be installed! Now all you must do is select the Ambiance-ColorYouWant or Radiance-ColorYouWant theme VIA your desktops theme manager!

Installing and Activating The Included Gnome Shell Themes.

Due to the current setup of gnome-shell themes in general a extra step is necessary to install the gnome-shell themes.This MUST be repeated for every user wanting to use the the themes on GnomeShell. We are SORRY this is not our complete doing.

Once you have installed Ambiance & Radiance Colors (As instructed or VIA a Ubuntu .deb package)

1.) Browse to where you installed the theme, then the fallowing folder... (/usr/share/themes/ then Ambiance-Colors or Radiance-Colors folder)2.) Open the file named "Ambiance-Colors-Theme-Gnome-Shell-Themes-All.zip" or "Radiance-Colors-Theme-Gnome-Shell-Themes-All.zip"3.) Extract the complete contents to "/home/YourUserName/.Themes"

(!)To see the folder (it's a hidden one!) press ctrl+h in this file browser window to view hidden folders. the folder we want to install it in is ".themes" in your home directory.

(Yes please repeat this process with the Ambiance-Colors or Radiance-Colors folder (The one you didn't install yet) if you want both ambiance and radiance gnome shell colors themes installed)

Fedora and RedhatInstall via searching for "gnome-tweak-tool" in Add/Remove Software or type: yum install gnome-tweak-tool ,in a terminal or Run Command

5.) Now Open the "Gnome Tweak Tool" (Sometimes labeled "Advanced Settings")6.) Once the "Gnome Tweak Tool" application is open...Select the "Theme" option from the list of options on the left.7.) Now select your desired version of Ambiance-ColorYouWant or Radiance-ColorYouWant from the "Gnome-Shell" drop down list box.Click apply.. Your Done!

See the included README file (Comes with your download) for how to install and use plus full credits (it's straight foreword but we are here to help)

(!)NOTE: Requires Ubuntu 11.04, Linux Mint 11, Fedora 15 and later (Because of theme engine) because you need to have murrine theme engine(Version 0.98 and newer!)(!) NOTE: XFCE version will work on Ubuntu 10.10 and newer

(!) Yes this is 100% GPL.

(!) NOTE: If you plan to use this theme on the LXDE desktop on Ubuntu 11.10, Mint 12 , Fedora 16. and later Please note there is a issue with LXDE and themes with a panel image leading to SIGNIFICANT wasteful CPU USE.